


Of Pink Curtains And First Kisses

by Erised_Rain



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drunkenness, First Kiss, M/M, post—hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 11:17:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1686425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erised_Rain/pseuds/Erised_Rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We all know that alcohol is bad. But if you ask Sirius he might disagree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Pink Curtains And First Kisses

**Author's Note:**

> Written for rs_small_gifts community a while ago, I completely forgot about it.

Sirius is twenty-one years old and he’s sitting on the floor, leaning back against the bathtub in the pink-curtained bathroom of Lupin’s family house. There are people singing outside. There is noise, someone has just cracked open a bottle of champagne and Sirius could have sworn he heard Peter squeaking and James yelling a series of profanities (Oh,  _yes_ , there is the sound of James’s face being slapped. Sirius knows this sound all too well and he grins thinking,  _Gotta hand it to you, Evans, you know how to handle your man, don’t you?_ ).   
  
He doesn’t care though; he’s already drunk, has been since he walked in, two hours late, through the red door on Lupin’s front porch, shirt messily tucked in and half-buttoned, with cheap lipstick marks on his collar and a heavy smell of alcohol on his breath.  
  
He has been drunk all through the traditional Christmas Dinner, Frank’s awful jokes (most of them including Hippogriffs), Alice’s irritating laughter, Lily’s worried glances, Peter’s caroling, and James’s tantrums. ( _“For Christ sake, Sirius! What the hell are you doing? Every night in some different, filthy pub, shagging god knows who, drinking god knows what?! What the hell is wrong with you? This has got to stop, do you hear me? It’s not safe, it’s not even healthy. God dammit, fuck! I’m talking to you, could you lay off that whiskey for a second or I swear to god I’m gonna shove it down your throat until it goes out through your other end?! The whole bottle, yes! I’m not joking, you idiot!”_ )   
  
So he did. He put down his whiskey and listened to James and then he listened to Lily, wondering if this good Auror/bad Auror thing had been practiced before. Then he listened to Peter (actually he didn’t really listen to him), nodded his head, took a bottle of whiskey and locked himself in the bathroom when no one was looking.  
  
 _This_ , he concludes, drinking straight from the bottle,  _is shit_.  _These fucking pink curtains are really shitty, Mrs. Lupin_. Sirius lights a cigarette with slightly shaking fingers, closes his eyes and inhales deeply, and something, something isn’t quite right. He frowns when he realizes that he has taken Remus’s cigarettes by mistake. And this is very strange, deeply disturbing even, because he has spent three hours fucking that Muggle girl with the sickening flowery perfume, and yet all he can smell now, on himself and taste in his mouth, is Remus. So he drinks a little more.  
  
Some days it’s because Remus grins like an idiot when he makes his tea (two spoons of sugar and just a little bit of milk!); some days it’s because the sleeves of his stupid flannel pajamas are rolled up his elbows so Sirius can see the tiny spider web of blue veins, and his slender wrists are just  _there_ , stabbing Sirius in the eyes. Sometimes it’s because he wears his good jeans, the ones with a hole in the knee (that keeps mysteriously reappearing even though Remus has repaired it thirty two times so far) and with a big back-pocket where you can always find Muggle coins or a subway ticket or sometimes even a caramel. And some days it’s because Sirius is staring at the pulsepoint on his neck and Remus lets him, and then Sirius doesn’t know if he’s imagining it or if the pulse there really does quicken.  
  
Some days it’s because he lies in his bed with no one there and he catches himself thinking about freckles (nose, chest, thigh, where else?) and scars (one behind his left ear, on his nose, his neck, that s-shaped one, you know, that goes  _down_ , hides bashfully inside the curve of a hip). He thinks about skin and flesh and mouth and heat and how it would be to…?  
  
Then he goes out, drinks, fucks a woman or a man and tries not to think about Remus’s body when he comes.  
  
But the worst are the days when he sits on the couch, reading the Prophet, and Remus sits on the couch too, right there, book in his lap, his long spine slightly curved, legs under the blanket (because he’s always cold) and Sirius says,  _“Oy, Moony, ha, listen to this one. A troll, a wizard and a gnome…Seriously, what sick idiot thinks that gnomes are funny enough to be put in a joke?”_  and Remus lifts his head from his book and smiles, saying,  _“Mhm, and that has nothing to do with the fact that Prongs’s garden gnome kicked your arse when we were in second year, yes?”_  and Sirius says,  _"Fuck you”_ , but there’s a smile tugging at the corner of his lips and he feels all warm, like he’s twelve again. Absurd isn’t it? Although they are on the verge of an open war, although the wizarding world is in the jaws of a deathly constant, Remus’s laughter is light like the echoes of wind chimes, and of all things, of all the stupid, ugly things Sirius is supposed to feel, he feels safe.  _Screw you,_  Sirius wants to say,  _how the hell do you do this?_  
  
He doesn’t think about Remus’s body then, no, but he does think about Remus and it scares the shit out of him. So he deals with it the only way he knows how; he goes out, drinks some more and fucks a random stranger. Sirius has slipped into this empty reality, blurred and darkened around the edges, because this makes the Complicated Things bearable. Drink numbs the odd sensations that spark beneath Sirius’s skin with terrifying frequency. Drink (Merlin bless the lucky bastard who invented alcohol!) makes everything better…well, at least until the sun creeps up again and there’s clattering in the kitchen and, “Tea, Sirius?” and a headache behind his eyelids that has nothing to do with the alcohol.  
  
And if there are traces of lipstick on his shirt, Remus pretends not to notice it.  
  
“We’re screwed, aren’t we?” he says to no one in particular, although he thinks perhaps the curtains understand how he feels. They’re pink, after all, in a place where a bloke is supposed to have a good piss or a wank if he feels like it. Pink! And isn’t that just utterly ridiculous and completely pathetic. Sirius thinks so and he laughs.   
  
He has never been one for reflection, for thinking about things, thinking things through, but even Sirius knows that this is a bad idea. Sirius knows that Remus hates himself too easily. He knows that if he kisses him, or touches him, or pins him against a wall, or anything of the sort, Remus will run away, crawl in his hole like a hurt animal and lick his wounds alone. He knows that if he touches him he will break him. And that…that he can’t do. Sirius knows a lot of things but nothing has ever taught him how to put something back together once it’s been broken.  
  
Remus is careful, wary, made of sharp corners and bony wrists and clever words that keep Sirius at a safe distance because  _yes, alright, I get it, alright, you’re afraid_. Too much of Remus’s life resembles a bad horror story with one million downs and only a handful of ups; too much of his life is pain and fear and lies, secrets, surprises, insecurities, uncertainties, excuses,  _no_  and  _yes_  and  _alright_  when he doesn’t mean it. And now, _finally_ , a few long years after Hogwarts Remus feels safe again. Sirius can tell by the way he fits on their brown-checkered couch, and the way he puts on his coat in the morning and heads to that gloomy Muggle place where he works as a librarian. Routine is safety for Remus, predictable days after predictable days, socks on the left, shirts on the right, Tuesdays after Mondays, Order Meetings on Wednesday, and dinner at James’s on Friday.   
  
And Sirius is a storm, wild and reckless and more likely to destroy than shelter, although Sirius thinks perhaps that is what he wants. But he will never be sure because Remus knows that Sirius is bad, that Sirius doesn’t think, that Sirius already hurt him once and that if he lets him, he will do it again. So, Remus doesn’t let him near. Sirius has become a part of Remus’s routine but he will never  _be_  Remus’s routine.  
  
So he drinks.  
  
The room is spinning slightly and the cold tiles are digging painfully into his back. He can still feel, which means he’s not nearly drunk enough. Well, fuck that! Sirius exhales a small puff of smoke into the air and tosses the cigarette in the toilet. It could be worse, right? Isn't that what people say? He lets his head fall back against the wall, his lashes fluttering shut.  
  
 _Merlin help me, I’m a grown man and we’re stepping into a bloody war. People are getting killed every day; hell, we can be dead tomorrow and all I can think about is your skin under my fingers._  
  
Oh, Sirius is pissed and furious and confused and afraid and maybe in love. Is this how it feels? And he is way out of his league here because the curtains are fucking pink and Peter is singing “God Rest Ye, Merry Hippogriffs.” The curtains are pink and they’re supposed to be brown, he is thinking. Remus likes brown. Perhaps he should change them to brown but, fuck it, he can’t seem to remember the spell and someone is knocking on his head, or is it the door maybe?  
  
“Occupied!” Sirius grunts but the intruder is persistent and doesn’t seem to give up. “I said, occupied! Wormtail, if that’s you I swear to god I’m gonna-“ but he never finishes his sentence because there’s some muttering behind the door and after a second it opens to let in Remus, who has a piece of a chocolate cake in his hair and an apologetic grin on his face.   
  
“Sorry, I figured you’d died so you wouldn’t mind,” he says casually and all Sirius can think about is how the colorful Muggle clothes really don't suit him.  
  
“Bastard. Some friend you are, Moony.” He grins back. “I missed James’s traditional food fight, eh?” he asks, trying to think clearly through the fog of whiskey and cigarettes and Remus Lupin crossing the bathroom to the chipped ceramic sink. He looks distinctly tired, the curve of his cheeks slightly pink, and the little creases around his eyes tell Sirius that he wants nothing more than to call this a night and go back to their flat and sleep. And how the hell does he know that?  
  
Remus sighs, drying his hands on the towel after washing out the remains of James’s idea of fun from his hair. He turns around and leans back against the sink, rubbing his temples wearily. “God, I hope Lily takes him home soon. As much as my Mother likes chocolate icing I doubt she will appreciate it on her wallpaper.” He laughs, although it sounds a little painful.   
  
Sirius doesn’t say anything. He drinks his whiskey and frowns when he catches Remus watching him. His eyes are too soft, too tired, too deep, too  _brown_ , too much…  _You’re not here to talk about your mother’s wallpaper, are you?_  
  
“Look, Sirius.” Remus’s voice skitters over his name as if it might hurt him.  _Hey, hey, bingo._  
  
“Your bloody turn isn’t it then?” Sirius spits out and vaguely wonders where the best place to vomit would be. “Fine, let’s hear it. You had me worried there for a moment anyway. Your uncharacteristic lack of eloquence during dinner while everyone was having a delightful little debate about my  _fucking_  life was rather...unsettling.” Oh, he feels the anger burning him up from inside, slowly, boiling steadily, and he doesn’t know which way it will go. Will he just beat him senseless or fuck him right through the wall?  _You don’t get to say anything to me! Don’t you even dare. Let’s just stop this now. I know you don’t want to go there; you won’t let me, will you? So, let’s stop, please._  
  
There’s a moment when Sirius is certain that Remus will turn back and leave, but he doesn’t and Sirius is suddenly chokingly scared. “I think it’s been enough, Sirius,” this time he says it in that stern, flawless, authoritative manner that he has perfected over the years of being the voice of reason to a bunch of boys with a whole lot of ideas but not even a tiny bit of a common sense.  
  
And that, that voice, is what tips him over the edge. “Oh, do you really?” Sirius snaps. “Hip hip hooray, Remus Lupin thinks it’s been enough! Ring the bells, everyone!” He sneers, sarcasm perfectly rolling down the edge of his lips. It doesn’t even matter that they’re not talking about the same thing.  
  
Remus, though, doesn’t look scared. That annoying expression that Sirius has never quite managed to decrypt is there and, god, he just wants to wipe it off his face. “Padfoot. This has got to stop,” he repeats, unyielding, all pale skin and silver scars, leaning against the chipped, ceramic sink.  
  
Sirius lets out a laugh that cuts through the air like a razor blade.  _And we’re there, Remus. We’re there and you asked for it. Now let’s see how you deal with it, and I’m sorry; I’m sorry but we’re there and I’m sorry._  “Tell me something, Moony my friend.” He stands up and the cigarettes fall down into the bathtub, but neither of them are paying attention. The room spins uncertainly for a moment before Sirius manages to focus again. “Why should I stop, hmm?” he dares him. “All the obvious reasons aside. Not safe, not healthy, sane, normal, whatever. It’s all been said by Lily and James and Peter. Come on, Remus, why should I stop? And be original for once in your  _fucking_  life.” Ah, the words sound so good on his tongue.  
  
 _Got you now._  There’s a terrifying pause while they stare at each other, years of unspoken things threatening to spill into the smoke-whiskey-heavy air, and then Remus looks down. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…Perhaps it would be wiser to talk about this tomorrow,” he says quietly and Sirius is pissed.  
  
“NO. Bloody hell, no! We’ll talk about this now, with all our friends in the next room and you tired enough so I can actually hear something that won’t be processed through your head one thousand times before you say the words,” he yells and takes a few steps so that now he’s standing right in front of the lycanthrope, close enough to see the exact moment when the boy in him retreats and there’s a wolf lurking now behind amber eyes. In four nights, the full moon is in four nights.  
  
Remus narrows his eyes at him. “Oh, so I should just go with the first  _shit_  that comes to my mind, like  _you_?” Ah yes, there it is, the wolf is showing its vicious teeth and Sirius is almost drunk with joy that he’s the reason for that.  _Yes, yes, let’s see Remus Lupin when he loses it. Let me see what I can do to you._  
  
“Oh my, he’s swearing,” Sirius mocks, tongue heavy under the lingering taste of alcohol. “We’re getting outside of your comfort zone? How bloody brilliant. Let me revel in this for a moment.”  
  
There’s fire in Remus’s eyes and thunder in his words, and Sirius thinks he might be shivering. “Sadly, you won’t be reveling for too long, seeing as you’re a few drinks away from passing out, like you do every goddamn night!” Now Remus is the one who takes that final step between them so they’re almost breathing each other’s air.   
  
“Now he’s being funny.  _Ha ha._  Your wit, it bites!” Sirius says and the words come out perfectly clipped, sharp around the edges, although he feels like he might explode. James has a habit of saying there’s an inexhaustible pool of Slytherin sarcasm in Sirius and fuck it, he has to agree with him now.   
  
“Sure, Sirius, it’s just hilarious! It’s all a joke to you, isn’t it?!” Remus is actually,  _really_  yelling and Sirius can feel a bitter bite of regret because Remus is tearing at the seams because of him and Merlin, how quickly he got him there. He knows Remus well enough to recognize  _this_. He’s seen it before, once. ”Oh how I  _laugh_  every night while I wonder if this is the night when you,  _you_  dumb shit, end up in some ditch, dead drunk and beaten up or worse! How I bloody laugh every fucking night when I hear you shagging god knows who in the next room! I do  _nothing_  but laugh!” he finishes breathlessly.  _No going back now, Lupin._  
  
Sirius is perfectly still. “So you have a problem with that?” he almost whispers because that’s enough for Remus to hear him. There’s only a few inches of space between them, only a few inches of space and light-years of silence.  
  
“Of course I have a fucking problem with that. You’re my friend, Sirius, and-” he cuts off, his face white and his expression terrified, and Sirius almost screams.  
  
“And  _what_?”  
  
“I..”  
  
“You what?”  
  
“I – I won’t, you know I won’t...You know-”  
  
Yes, he knows, the problem is he’s way past caring right now. “Say it, Remus. Goddamnit, just say it, while we’re still bloody alive! I can’t do this anymore,” he hisses,  _almost_  against his mouth.  _Only a few inches, see. And I really can’t do this anymore. Can you?_  
  
Remus makes a strange noise, low in his chest (Sirus can actually feel it!) and his fingers curve into the fabric of Sirius’s shirt, right where his collarbone is, where the button is missing, and Sirius can’t tell if he’s pulling him closer or pushing him away.   
  
What he  _can_  tell is that Remus smells of gingerbread cookies and confetti after an explosion, that his knuckles are pale, four-days-before-the-full-moon pale and he’s looking at Sirius, eyes frantic, pleading, almost desperate. They say  _yes_ , or maybe  _no_ , or maybe it’s both, but it doesn’t matter really. It doesn’t. They’ve been playing this torturous game for so long that right there, Sirius decides he should just do what he does best – act without thinking, to just…do.   
  
“Please,” Sirius’s voice breaks and he feels like laughing hysterically because he wouldn’t even dream of doing this if he weren’t this drunk. But he’s brave now, he’s a Gryffindor after all, a lion, a Black, and he only needed about fifty-two bottles of whiskey to remember that.   
  
“Please. Just- Just let me.” He leans over, pressing his palms flat on the sink next to Remus’s hips, and kisses him full on the mouth.  _Oh._  
  
Remus’s lips are chapped, vaguely tasting of chocolate and champagne and he is mortally still, so Sirius’s hands go up, touching his collarbone, the hollow of his throat, that tiny scar just below his ear, his jaw, his cheekbones, sand-golden locks of his hair.   
  
To be perfectly honest, Sirius has no idea what he’s doing. Perhaps Alastor Moody was right, standing in a dimly lit corridor of the Ministry, with hands in his pockets and that bloody eye looking somewhere inside his head, perhaps he was right when he told him  _“Black. Listen to me, lad. You will go absolutely stark raving mad one of these days.“_  
  
Perhaps this is the day, Sirius thinks madly, ears buzzing. He’s fairly certain that he’s shaking but, dammit, he’s not the only one; he can feel tremors coursing through Remus’s body and the mad, fluttering pulse in Remus’s jugular beneath his fingers.  _Come on_ , he counts to three.  _Oh, for the love of Merlin, Remus, come on!_ But Remus doesn’t move.   
  
 _There’s that, then_ , Sirius panics, and just when he thinks that everything is crashing down around his ears, and bloody hell, he isn’t ready, not nearly, Remus sighs into the kiss, arching against Sirius.   
  
He buries his fingers in Sirius’s hair and pulls him closer none too gently, catching his lower lip between his teeth. “S-shit.” he mutters weakly and then his tongue presses at Sirius’s lips, hot and wet and insistent, and Sirius opens his mouth with a groan. Holy fucking Merlin, Sirius realizes, Remus is  _kissing_  him! Finally. And it’s fervent and wild and utterly, utterly  _perfect_. Mad too, he thinks.  
  
When they finally break apart, they’re breathing heavily, like they’ve spent years underwater and now finally they’re above surface, breathing air. Remus looks positively lost, flushed and trembling in Sirius’s arms. “Well.” he says, breathless, pupils blown wide, lips red and swollen, fingers still tangled in Sirius’s hair. “I think. I think you’re one stubborn bastard, Sirius Black.” he smiles with than one hundred percent moony smile and Sirius can only shrug, because, well, he is.   
  
“And I think maybe…maybe  _yes_.” Remus says quietly and right there, in Mr. and Mrs. Lupin’s family house, in the bathroom with pink curtains and a chipped ceramic sink, Sirius decides that alcohol, sometimes, isn’t as bad as people say.


End file.
